Baker & Taylor Tracks In-Store Inventory of Movie and Music Recordings

Baker & Taylor's Requirements

Baker & Taylor distributes movies and music recordings to retail stores nationwide, and has responsibility for monitoring sales and in-store inventory to maximize sales and profitability. An important area of their work involves managing special retail displays for seasonal and promotional products. Prior to using an automated system for data collection, Baker & Taylor's field employees would visit each store, take inventory counts by hand, and submit paper forms to the corporate office, where other employees would manually enter that data into a computer. Baker & Taylor was concerned about

Poor data integrity
Inefficiency of manual data entry
Lack of timely reporting

Solution Implemented by Barcoding Inc.

Barcoding Inc. produced custom in-store inventory software and supplied Symbol MC50 portable data collection terminals. Baker & Taylor field employees each received their own MC50 terminal with software. The inventory software automatically prompts each field employee to login in, identify the current store location, identify the products, and report on the condition of the displays. Every item on the display is scanned to quickly generate a reliable inventory count. The employees can visit multiple stores each day. At the end of each day, each employee docks their MC50 into a cradle connected to their computer. Software from Barcoding Inc. running on their commuter automatically uses File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transmit the data to the Baker & Taylor host system at the corporate office. The data transfer file is formatted to provide easy import into the main Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for reporting and analysis.

Business Results

Data integrity has increase dramatically as a result of using barcode scanners to automate the process. Mistakes formerly caused by writing numbers incorrectly and mis-typing have been eliminated. Baker &Taylor immediately saw efficiency gains by not having to re-enter the data into the computer and by not having to fix errors. On the management side, Baker & Taylor was able to receive the data at the end of each day, providing management with much more timely information than before. The system helps Baker & Taylor employees to visit more stores per day because automatic data collection is faster than pencil and paper..

The system allows Baker & Taylor to make merchandising decisions that improve sales and turnover, resulting in more revenue and higher profitability. The improved inventory system has become a value that Baker & Taylor can use to attract new suppliers and expand their business.

To learn more, please contact Barcoding Inc.

For Further Information

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Our sales team will answer all your questions about inventory control and automatic data collection.